The Blackened Harvest Report
by Spartan2005
Summary: How the Republic covered up one of the biggest massacres of their time.
1. Fesbil

**(Author's Note: This takes place in the Star Wars universe and, more specifically, the ECaS Fanfic located here: s/10574133/1/Elite-Corps-among-Squads)**

Two years ago, there was a dangerous shootout in the streets of coruscant. The firefight, which started and lasted for only ten minutes, claimed the lives of three commandos, two police units, seven ARC units, twenty three civilians and the disappearance of the fourth commando of the squad.

Since then, there has been a lot of controversy over the incident we now know as the blackened harvest incident. Questions and rumors still cloud the air, one of the most important being what happened to the missing commando. Even the republic itself still does not have a complete grasp of what happened. Several weeks after the incident, the republic intelligence agency sent out a military payed civilian journalist to question military, government, and civilian officials on the location and backstory on the missing commando. The reporter was not given military backing of any kind. Some of the names and dates have been hidden or changed to hide the identities of the report.

This was never published or filed.

Sgt Maj. Fesbil ██████

[I figured that the best place to start would be the Kaminoan cloning center on, where else, Kamino. Fesbil's office is comfortable and, like all Kaminoan accommodations, pristine. Fesbil ██████ is a trainer of the clones here on this base, a trainer of Republic Commandos. His gruff stature and unwavering way of thinking makes him perfect as a trainer. I mention CT: ████ and Fesbil takes a moment of silence before speaking, gathering his thoughts.]

Are you a coder, Mr. █████? And I don't mean holographic code, I mean binary. Not a lot of people do it now-a-days. It's like a dead language, no one cares to touch it. To learn it. But what I can understand of it, it's a language made up of ones and zeros repeated over and over. But every now and then, you get that one typo. That one two or that one added digit.

Cloning is very similar in a lot of ways. It's the same thing repeated over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. But every now and then you get that one screw up. That one special clone, like when a holo-recording skips. All it takes is one little mistake in the computing. And poof, we get a little bump in the long line of clones. Sometimes it's a clone with blonde hair, sometimes a clone with a bit of a stutter, sometimes the clone born with blue eyes. But there was only one clone that was altered in such a devastating way... There was CT: ████... Rats...

Rats was a... Special little guy. He was shot out of the testing tube too early, which was lucky for him. Any later and he would have grown three stomachs... Rats was that kind of genetic skip where instead of skipping a little digit of code, maybe altering a complexion tone, you skip a whole line of code. And that's how you get Rats. So, how did it happen? The most common, and, outlandish theory is the doctor theory. Someone decided to "alter" with the cloning process... When Rats was born, he was born without the ability to think morally, without conscience. He had no language skills until... Well, you'll see. He had no capacity for giving, or taking any form of compassion. To him, people were like objects. Assets. A means to an end. He even saw himself that way, which is what I think went wrong on that fateful day...

Rats wasn't supposed to live. His kidney's and liver where around half the size of what they should be. Needless to say he was a lightweight if I ever saw one. Got sick every time someone so much as sneezed. He was albino, sensitive to sunlight. Made it impossible to go outside without his helmet in the daytime. And more importantly, the whole social side of his brain was fucked from the start. I didn't think he even said a word until he was twelve.

It was when he fifteen when I knew he would be trouble. Up until his teen years I don't think he had much trouble with the other clone kiddies. They generally got along. But as they grew up and Rats still didn't say much, more and more judgment started to pass. More and more kids started laying into him, making fun of him. They didn't think of the bigger picture, about war. When clones are kids, they're foolish. They don't really know just what kind of things they're being bred to do, all they know is that they're being bred to do something. Imagine waking up everyday, being reminded you were made for something, and then not being told what. It didn't sit well with them... So like any other angry confused kids, they lashed out. And Rats was their favorite target.

Anyways, the kids started making fun of Rats. Personally, I don't blame them really... But that's not to say it was acceptable. I stopped it when I could, but the other trainers didn't. I think that's why Rats only really talked to me, on those few occasions... But soon there was a shift and I know exactly when. It was when he was seventeen. This kid starts yelling at Rats for doing something, I can't really remember what. It was something trivial like bumping in to him. Anyways, during the middle of this yelling Rats looks at him, right in his eyes, and spits unto his face.

Now, what happened next is exactly what'd you'd expect. Rats got the sh!t kicked out of him. The kid just layed into him, started throwing Rats around. In the middle of it Rats raised his voice for the first time, he yelled out: "Stop". Afterwords, both eyes bruised, lacerations all along forehead, his lip was busted in several places, and two missing teeth. But after that... It all changed.

You see, Rats' mind is a whole lot different from the other clones. That was evident from the very start. But his whole mindset on teamwork and comrade ship was completely different from that of other clones. Where as clones looked at each other as brothers, Rats looked at other clones as assets. Nothing more. He didn't see clones as people. He saw them as tools. He didn't see himself as a person, and that's partially the reason why he is called Rats.

When the time came two years later to ship out, he was the most skilled unit in the whole batch. Trust me when I say no one f*cked with him anymore, and certainly that kid from earlier got what came to him...

_**There is a pause as he thinks about what he is going to say next **_I don't think you just understand completely how much of a change this is... Rats went from someone we were considering tossing into the janitorial staff into the highest operative we've ever had in our possession. At first I was shocked, I didn't know why or even how this happened. It's certainly not everyday you see something like this. So I looked into it. Steroids? Was it drugs? Was it bribery of some sort? After monitoring him for days, I realized exactly what happened.

Comparing the security footage of the other members of his group and Rats, I realized. While the other clones were busy having fun and messing around in free time, Rats was reading his field manual for the billionth time. When other clones were busy with holo sims, he was at the firing range. When the other clones were at the cafeteria eating, he was at the gym pouring over the weights. When clones made fun of him he drank their fire, their acid and spat it right back at them. And when it came time, he rose above and beyond what he was made to do... Don't you see?... He turned his defection into a benefit...

**Can we talk about the Blackened Harvest Incident? And how it happened?**

_**Fesbil smirks slightly **_Hell no.


	2. Samson

Captain Samson ████████

[Captain Samson ████████ is the chief of operations on a small Republic outpost located on the front lines of Felucia. Samson was the commander of the squad Rats belonged too. While he was here, his squad was charged with clearing large forested areas in Felucia using incendiary weapons. His squad had run into the most conflicts with the indigenous animals compared to any other unit. Another reason for the nickname Rats. Me and Samson meet in his small tent.]

I wish he would stop calling himself Rats. It was never a good name for him. Others might disagree, but I think a better name for him would be Rec. You could ask him any question regarding the handbook and he'd spew it out. He was like a human tape recorder. All you had to do was press play, and he could recite the whole fucking handbook on memory.

Rats was hated around here. Yeah yeah, he was "socially awkward", said command. But that wasn't it. Just the way Rats looked at you... With those beady red eyes... He was sizing men up, almost as to say: "How much is your life worth to me?"

**Rats was assigned forest clearing, correct?**

You could say that, yeah.

**Why did you assign Republic Commandos menial tasks like forest clearing? That sounds like a "shiny" job if I ever heard one.**

_**Samson gave me a serious stare **_Forest clearing? In Felucia? Maybe in Curiscant. But here, things are different. Droids are the least of your worries when you have a 10 ton Rancor in the bushes behind you. And it was Rats job to walk right up to it and try and cook it with the little plasma powered safety match we gave em'. And it wasn't glorious either. Other Republic Commandos were given glamorous tasks like sneaking behind enemy lines or assassinating generals or rescuing POWs. But Rats? His job was to kill, kill more, and kill until it hurts. Then kill some more. That's what he did.

And it's not like we just sent them out to clear out a couple bushes, oh no. Baker(1) was the ONLY squad in the whole HEMISPHERE that were daisy burners. Baker had to clear out hundreds of square miles of nothing but plants, trees and beasts. Sometimes it would take them a whole month or two of no radio contact from base OR themselves, as they were usually split up to cover more ground, just a month all by themselves. For every 501st PLATOON that took out a rancor, Baker SQUAD took out two more.

**You said they had month without contact, does that include ammo drops?**

Yup

** But... How could they clear out a forest without plasma for the flamethrowers?**

Simple, light one tree and just watch as it spread. Occasionally they had to relight the bushfire, but not much. Most of the time they saved the plasma for the Rancors.

**And food? Water?**

_**Samson raises an eyebrow **_You don't think a commando knows how to hunt?

**I was told here was where he got the nickname, Rats, but I recently found out that Kamino was originally where he got it. Why?**

A lot of people think that too. It's true that Kamino is where he got the nickname, but most called him Teeth when he got here. Bit a guy in the ear, long story. But it's here where he got respect for his original name, and I guess he switched back.

**How so?**

Well, one mission we sent out Baker squad to clear out a relatively small island in the middle of a large river. They got there and immediately split up, it's better to split up and burn the area from all sides. Covers more ground. Anyway, when the commandos met back up at the center of the island days later, Rats was gone. No contact. After a week of combing the island and poking around through fields of ash and smoke, which by the way, is harder than it looks, we found Rats. He had fallen into a large wild womp rat den. Broke both his legs in the fall. Survived by actually tricking the rats to come close enough to stab with his vibroblade, then ate them raw.

**Wow...**

Right? Won him a lot of respect at base. Alot of fear too.

** What's that supposed to mean?**

** _Samson thinks for a moment _**Clones arn't as good as they seem, both in the morale and combat term. Clone's are just as good as soldiers, if you look at it. The only difference is that clone's are cheaper... But... Behind the helmet there's... Well, a dark side. Not like the sith, never like the sith. But a little bit of Jango Fett's dark side, I guess. And Rats had that in surplus. Clones like to be honorable, to be noble. But when you look closely, fear is how you gain power as a clone. After that, No one messed with Rats anymore. They just kept their distance. Rats didn't mind the loneliness... Actually, now that I think about it, he liked it... All those days and nights, spending whole weeks not saying a word... Must have been mind AND soul crushing... If he had a soul, that is.

**What happened? I mean, how did he, you know, move on?**

Good question. One minute he was in the base, the next he was gone. I just woke up one morning and someone told me he was re-assigned, packed up, and left all in the same night.

(1) The four man squad Rats was put into. Ironically named as his squad would invent the phrase "Bake forest", meaning deforestation.


	3. James

Agent James ███████

[After extensive investigation in inter-planetary flight records leaving from Felucia, I tracked the flight to Coruscant and further tracked his meager off-duty luggage to a hotel rented out to Republic Intelligence. After pestering them enough, I managed to get a interview with Rats' handler. It seems he was recruited into RI (1) as a Intelligence Operative. Agent James ███████ was his handler. We meet at a local bar in Coruscant. James slouches in his chair and gives off a mixed vibe of relax but tense. He smiles warmly as I sit down. He has to half yell over the crowd.]

Rats was awesome, if you want my opinion. Got the job done every time. No matter what he had to do, he did it like a machine. Without falter, without any amount of failure. He was perfect for RI too, worked alone, hated working with teams, and he was an expert tor- er, "active interrogator". You could tell he liked doing it. Plus, RI couldn't possibly turn it down, it was like the holy fucking thermal detonator. It was just too good to be true.

**What do you mean?**

What I mean is that RI is the least known, most underfunded government department in the whole Republic. Im pretty sure the Public Holo-message office has better funding. Compared to the Republic Military Forces, the RI is about as rich as a hobo. Not only THAT but RI was the Republics eyes and ears, we had to be everywhere at all times, funding or no funding. Behind every hero, there was RI. Behind every Jedi, RI. Behind every alleyway, doorway, baby carriage, there had to be RI. A lot of people credit Obi Wan for killing Grievous. Fuck that, all he had to do was shoot the poor sod in the heart. It was US who tracked him to Utapau, US who, after moths of monitoring, found his ship. It was US who did ALL the hard parts. Obi Wan was just a means to an end... You know how many times we got the chance to recruit a Republic Commando? Not only a RC, but a RC that graduated the top of his training group? None. This was a one in a lifetime opportunity for RI, and we took it. Man, the face on the RI chief of operations was priceless. He looked like a five year old who just pissed his pants. _**James giggles like a schoolboy **_It was priceless. I don't think he even payed attention to Fesbil when he told him Rats long list of psych problems...

**What about the military? I would imagine they wouldn't just hand over a top notch RC easily.**

Are you kidding?! I'm pretty sure Spec Ops had a spastic fit. Oh yeah they fought for Rats alright. Hired the best lawyers in the whole fucking galaxy. But they forgot RI has access to all the government documents ever created. We pulled up multiple accounts of Rats' trainer recommending him for janitorial work and even footage of other trainers neglecting Rats as he got the sh!t kicked out of him as a kid. Poor guy, even poorer Spec Ops department. Needless to say, it didn't look good for Spec Ops.

And guess what? As soon as we got Rats, I got to be his handler! I dunno what Rogers was thinking, guess he decided to throw me a bone.

**And what about the transfer process? You can't just take a RC and put him in Intelligence Operator boots.**

Normally, your right. But Rats learned-... _**Snaps his fingers **_like that. I gave him the field manual and he gave it back two days later, memorized the whole god damn thing. It took him a week to pass the course, which is fast even for a RC.

Of course, that's not to say Republic Commandos and Intelligence Operators are the same thing. Intelligence Operators, for one, lose the Katarn armor (2). Instead they're given black Mk II's, but Rats decided to use an old black Mk I helmet... I don't know why (3).

Not only that, but our armor is black. Where as Commando squads vary between units (4). Also, to make up for the sh!tty armor, Intelligence Operators have a "Free choice" policy on the firearms.

**"Free choice policy?..."**

Mhm. Republic Commandos are given standard issue spec ops DC-17s. Attachments included. But when your a Intelligence Operator, the armorer has a "You think it, we make it" sort of policy. Meaning Intelligence Operators get whatever weapon, attachments, customizable tools, and even personal touches like engravings they want. So Rats turned in his boring DC-17 for a black DC-17 with a yellow stripe on the side, three different scopes, extended 100 round magazine, a collapsible silencer that fit into a little compartment in the gun, at the flick of a button, and even a under-barreled hand held flechette-cannon on the bottom.

**Flechette canon?**

Yep, little doo-dad that fires a ton of little darts at once. Rips things to shreds, and Rats' canon was the best in the business. His flechettes were heated, could rip right through steel even. At close quarters, it could vaporize the top half of someone. He even took down a gunship with a well placed shot with one of those.

** Holy shit, don't you think that's a bit excessive?! Maybe a bit over the top?...**

Why? You know how many RCs there are in the army? Couple hundred, I believe. But Intelligence Operators? Around twenty of them existed. And we're not even talking about how many are active today. It's not that Intelligence Operators were better, it's just that there's less of em'. In order to compensate for the pitiful membership, they got the better Deeces (5)

**So... What happened?**

How do you mean?

**What happened next?**

_**James looks at a Twi'lek female carefully and closely as she passes by. **_Sorry, what?

**The Blackened Harvest incident, What happened!?**

_**James frowns **_You really want to know? Because honestly, I have no idea. All I know is we sent him out with his RC team. The plan was he'd fake his death, then when the mission was over he'd be classified as KIA and he'd be ours. The "mission", which I remind you, was supposed to be fake, was a simple search and destroy mission. We told them that there was a CIS informant somewhere in Coruscant. What was SUPPOSED to happen was one of our agents would pop out with a squirt gun (6) and shoot Rats in the head with it. Rats would feign death with the help of some heart slowing meds, and the agent would be arrested but released secretly without anyone ever knowing.

**But you and me both know that's not what happened.**

_**James smiles **_Clearly, all you have to do is look outside your front window and see the damage.

1\. Short for "Republic Intelligence"

2\. Armor worn by Clone Commandos or Republic Commandos

3\. Referring to the old Mk I clone armor used on Geonosis and the new Mk II armor used now.

4\. For example, Delta squad was given gray armor that was painted and customized. Omega squad had Black.

5\. Deece, the slang term for Republic's military weaponry, DCs.

6\. A Republic Intelligence term for a laser pistol armed with blanks, no live ammunition.


	4. Butcher

RI Cheif of Operations ██████ ██████ A.K.A."Butcher"

[James mentioned that his superior, who will be nicknamed "Butcher", was the first to learn about his new addition to Republic Intelligence. After only a bit of pressure and research, he agrees to let us meet in one of his office. His office, although simple, carries a bit of elegance to hit. As he sits at his desk facing me, behind him is a full view of Curiscant out of a large window. On his desk was nothing but a holo-projector on the left side of it, which now showed a complete holo-image of Rats. Although it was fake, Rats was sporting a very contempt smile in the holo-image, and it was hard to speak directly to Butcher with Rats staring at me. The Butcher was a fat, stout Rodian who spoke very slowly.]

I'm not telling you anything.

**Why not?**

Because I said so. Take it up with the head of Republic Intelligence... I'm sure he'll want to be annoyed.


	5. Marcus

Head of Republic Intelligence Marcus ██████

[Marcus is a very tall, thin old man. He has a large white beard and large glasses. Although old, he seems to have a very keen sense of his surroundings, common within the intelligence gathering community. We speak in a interrogation room this time, Marcus has locked the door behind him and shut off the audio detectors. I did not know I was about to step on one of the biggest bombshells in history.]

You wanted to talk about CT: ████, Rats, and I know what you want to ask me about exactly.

**The Blackened Harvest incident...**

_**He takes a deep, wavering breathe. Looking around the room, then eying me. **_… How much is your life worth? I wonder. In this galaxy, there are so many living, breathing bodies... So many pumping hearts and thinking minds... So many souls and beliefs... It's hard to think of yourself when you are compared to the Galaxy, all the billions of lives... Trillions, even...

_**There was a long pause**_

… There are things in this world we keep as secrets not only for our safety, but for our humanity... For our future... That's why it's been so hard for you to get a single soul to tell you what happened that day... And I suppose it's for the best... But it doesn't matter, I only have a year left, the doctors say. And I might as well go out with a bang.

We all know Blackened Harvest was a mistake. I'm not going to say it wasn't, it was a loss of life that could have been easily avoided. But... What people tell you is not always the truth...

The operation was to go smoothly. Rats and his squad were deployed with civilian clothing, and their Deeces and armor hidden in bags they carried. The IDEA was that Rats and his squad would reach a back alley in the financial district, and take it to the residential district. From the alleyway, they would drop the bags and put on their gear. Next, they'd make their way to a "safe house" across the street. Of course, we both know it was empty. We also both know that halfway across the street, an agent was supposed to appear from behind a speeder and shoot a couple blanks at CT: ████. Rats would go down, he'd apply intense sleep meds to himself VIA pulling a small tag on his shin armorpiece, commandos would pull out and be EVACed with the "body", "body" is taken to morgue and claimed dead. From there, Rats got a new CT number and would be sent to Republic Intellegence for his next mission. And his commandos would think he was dead, and it would remain that way.

That's not what happened.

Everything went as smoothly as it was supposed to go... Rats and his team reached the alleyway, he put on his stuff, and they went across the street.

… But...

… Something happened when the agent exposed himself and started shooting blanks at Rats... More specifically, something happened to Rats... You see, his brain is hardwired to complete his objectives, no matter what. He was born that way. Even if the objective was a fake one... Something in Rats broke in two, he confused himself on what he was supposed to do and what he was told to do. One half of his brain told him to complete his FAKE objective and clear the safe house, the other half of his brain told him to complete his REAL objective, and to apply the sleep meds. I guess in the end, the fake objective won over...

Rats shot the agent as he popped up to shoot his blanks at Rats. Rats' Deece was loaded, so the agent died immediately when two lasers fried his brains. His squad mates, thinking that Rats had done what he was supposed to do, continued moving across the street. He followed behind them. All across the neighborhood, people called the authorities after hearing the gunshot. By now, the commandos were SUPPOSED to be gone. But since they had no reason to exfil, they pressed on.

It was when they were stacking up on the house entrance when Rats finally went crazy. He snapped, realizing that he was both failing one objective while succeeding in the other. His squad mates started to take notice of this when Rats started to apologize loudly for failing the mission. His squad slicer, confused, was about to tell him that the mission wasn't over yet. He was interrupted when Rats raised the flechette cannon on his Deece and opened fire.

The commandos in his squad didn't stand a chance... Since Rats was so close to them when he opened fire, they were shredded within seconds. Along with a large portion of the front entrance to the house. The slicer was the first to go, Rats shot him directly in the head with a flachette shell. The other commandos stared at Rats and the slicer in shock, their training failing them in this gruesome scene of betrayal. Rats took advantage of that, and finished off the other two. Shooting them both in the chest with quick succession.

It was at this point civilians began to gather outside the safe-house, wondering what was going on... At this point, Rats was full blown mentally unstable, compromised. He had a hard time understanding what was threat and what wasn't. He was told that there were to be no one to know he was alive... I guess he took it literally... He-... He came out of the building, rambling something. The civilians started to back up, but it was too late. Rats opened fire, with the commando training he was given it was well beyond one-sided. They ran but... They couldn't get far. Rats used his grenades, throwing it into the crowd. Blood, meat, organs, it all hit the pavement... So many lives... Brutally slaughtered.

The police units stood no chance, I'm not even going to tell you how that went... The police speeder didn't even survive Rats' rampage. Rats was making his way down the street at this point, moving from cover to cover. All the civilians either had fled by now or were bloody red marks on the street. Rats, ironically, was moving to his exfil point, thinking that he had completed his objectives when in actually he didn't even have a team to exfil with. That's when the ARCs came in... Elite Civilian Protection Enforcement (1), ARCs that weren't good enough to be military. But they were still ARCs, you see. What happened next was interesting...

Rats engaged them, shooting a good number of them. Alot of them... Right around his third kill, he ran out of ammo and proceeded to beat the fourth ARC to death... He pinned him to the ground behind a car, ripped off the ARCs helmet and just slammed the helmet into his head over and over and over again... The other ARCs tried to get around the car and WOULD have shot him, but something happened. RI commandos bust out of nowhere, behind speeders, buildings, dumpsters, everywhere, catching the remaining couple ARCs off guard. Taking them out in quick succession. Rats, who went for his pistol to shoot the RI units, was too late. One of the commando's stunned him, cuffed him, and dragged him into the nearest alleyway. The commandos disappeared, along with an unconscious Rats...

_**There was another pause, Marcus went into a coughing fit somewhere in the silence and apologized. **_

… We didn't know it at the time, none of us knew it. But what we were witnessing was one of the biggest coverups in Intelligence history. The agency was giving the military the biggest middle finger that there was to give. You know what happened? You'd think Rats would have been put out of duty, right?... Wrong. Intelligence knew that even if Rats was unstable, even if Rats was amoral and dirty and unprofessional, even if he was mentally insane, They. Still. Hired. Him. Can you believe it? This man murdered a total of thirty five people, twenty three of which civilians. Woman and children. And the Republic didn't discharge him...

I thought about it for a long while. A really long while. 'Why would the Republic do this?...' I thought, 'Why would they hire someone who killed innocent people, OUR innocent people?...' And then, one day it hit me. Rats wasn't executed, Rats was never sent to prison, Rats was never even punished because Rats did exactly what we wanted him to do. He did exactly what we made him to kill.

So what if he killed thirty five innocent people? You know how many live on Coruscant? One trillion. One. Trillion. In the eyes of the Republic, it didn't matter if thirty five people were killed. Even children. Because in the Republic's eyes, Rats was well worth it. Because Rats was the person... The thing... The MONSTER that the Republic needed. They didn't need, or want, more morally correct jedi. They didn't want more heroic clones, what the Republic wanted, what it needed, was a bad guy. A big mean dog to deliver some bite from it's pitiful bark.

The CIS weren't scared of us, we had nothing to scare them with. Heroes aren't scary, we were losing our propaganda battles by miles. Sure, Jedi's are really nice and really polite. And sure, they can do all sorts of neat tricks with they're light batons of justice. But people weren't afraid to fight them. The jedi deal with passive tactics, taking prisoners when they could, refraining from violence whenever possible, avoiding conflict to instead read they're holocrons and be wise. Sure, clone's like Captain Rex and Commander Cody and so many other Morally Correct Max test tube babies (2) were soldiers and shot things... But they lacked the same problem, a un-intimidating face. They too, were passive.

But Rats... Rats was like the little gremlin the heroes kept in case they needed to do something awful... He was our loaded gun, he was like a scapegoat. Kinda... When General Kenobi needed a criminal to talk, he would call Rats. When Commander Cody needed a clone disciplined, Rats... You have no idea about the subtle effect Rats had on the CIS Shadowfeed system... Underneath this whole war battles were being raged on intelligence and propaganda, and by the core, I think this war would have been a lot more bloody if it hadn't been for Rats. Even Sith sometimes get the willies from him (3).

… So they cave him some mental therapy, gave him some meds, and sent him back to RI... There were some accusations on clone madness (4), but diagnosis revealed that Rats wasn't mad, he was just too technical... It was insane. He wasn't even punished, I don't think. Around a week later he was calling himself Intelligence Operative. We needed to put him someplace among elite, some place among assassin's and miscreants. We couldn't place him with other clones, too much unit cohesion, too much friction(5). So... Place where only the elite's went... No clones... Perfect, 84th bound he went.

**So... That's... That's it?...**

Yep

**He murdered thirty or so innocents, against orders, and was sent back into action?**

Mhm

… **In one of the most elite squads of the war?**

As long as he wasn't given objectives that were literally impossible to complete or objectives that negated one another, he was deemed A-OK... The families that died were given condolences, but the Republic Intelligence community never gave them a reason how. They never even stated what happened or why... That must have been horrible to the families that lost loved ones in the incident... Seeing your loved ones, friends, family being shot and blown up... And not even told as to why... (6)

**My god...**

That's not even the most messed up part.

**Hm?**

Republic Intelligence classified the whole thing as a mission success... To this day, Rats is still considered to have a 100% success rate...

_**There was a long pause as we both mulled over these thoughts in our brain**_

**Where is he now?**

If only I knew.

**NOTE: **(Marcus died 17 days after this interview. His death was not of his disease, but of a supposed suicide as he jumped out his apartment window. Republic Intelligence denied all allegations of a assassination.)

(1) The ECPE SpecOps unit designated with Domestic crime in Coruscant, none of which survived the onslaught.

(2) Derogatory term used for clones, coined by CV-█████

(3) Referring to an incident where two sith inquisitors fled from Rats upon sight of him.

(4) A mental affliction with clones that were per-maturely conceived, rendering them mentally unstable.

(5) Term used by RI to signify conflict or argument within a squad or partnership.

(6) This was made to be false, as it turns out RI told the families of the dead that they're loved one's deaths were due to the infamous Coruscant Insurrection, which happened a while earlier.


	6. Rats

Captain CT:████, Rats.

[It was several months after the interview with Marcus that I made any headway on the case. I was lying low in an apartment in Coruscant when I got the message. It wasn't a holo-message, an audio message, or even a text message. I received the message via a letter passed through my door. The writing was scratchy and hard to read, but simple: "Back from Vjun, at Senate Building. Can't talk for long. Bring no one. Rats"]

[When I got there, he was waiting for me. Although pale and not exactly a bodybuilder, Rats was wiry and nimble. He was wearing his armor, surprisingly. But I decided I didn't want to see him in a T-shirt. He wore sunglasses, probably for my comfort. But it didn't protect me from his uneven grin. We sat down at a table nearby, the bright sunny day prevented him from sitting in the open. So we sat under an awning.]

Why are you here, anyway?

** I'm here to talk to you ab-**

That's not what I asked, listen to me carefully. WHY are you here? You've gotten your report, you've got the evidence, you've know what happened. So why have you come here? Hm? There is nothing I can tell you about that day that Marcus hasn't other than I am not sorry.

**Your not?**

I never am. I'm not saying I enjoy making pain, or that I enjoy killing things. People always assume I take joy in killing. But that is a lie. If I took joy in killing, I would not be here. I'd be with a Sith, or I'd be a CIS spy. But no, I'm here. Despite everything. Despite abuse and harassment, despite rumors and lies, despite hypocrites and judgment. I'm here, and not there. Yes, I blame me for killing those people. But the blame is not exactly heavy on my conscience. If you want to blame somebody, blame the little puny snot nosed clonelets, the industry of lies I work in, the harsh words of teammates and friends, and the worst of them all; the idle spectators that stood and watched. That made me into what I am today, that made me Rats.

No, I do not take joy in killing. But I am to say I feel nothing in it. No joy or sadness, no pain or pleasure. It is a gift, friend. It is a gift that I do not have to think about the men and woman I've killed over the years, innocent and guilty. It is a gift I can sleep easy, with no guilt on my heart or regret in my veins.

**I'm not your friend.**

** _Rats grins widely and raises his arms _**Who is? Who dares befriend Rats the clone? The killer? The monster? The wretch? **_He laughs warmly, as if he has made a funny joke. _**I didn't expect friendship. And neither did I want it.

People seem to think that The Republic is a shining beacon of morality and justice. That The Republic is out for the betterment of everyone. It isn't, the only difference between US and THEM is that THEY have no cover, no little curtain to hide their atrocities. The Republic has a wing of Intelligence JUST for covering up the Republic's messes. I should know, I work in it.

**_There is a short pause as Rats takes a breath_**

I think I'm done here, I have scum to kill.

**Anything to add?**

I may not be as skilled as wise as Yoda, or skilled as Obi Wan, or charismatic like Anakin. But I can guarantee that if I ever get my hands on your throat... Even they can't save dead men.

**The Blackened Harvest report was never filed.**


End file.
